monoamine
2d ago
Have you come up with an argument for why this should not be done to you instead, since freedom of speech is "worthless at best"?
I've gotten banned from /pol/ several times for making (non-bait/troll/rule-breaking) left-leaning posts. I find it pathetic but I'm not going to demand to speak before Congress and advocate for a law that requires me to post whatever I want there. My options are either to accept it or use a different site. People can (and should) moderate sites as they like.
Why shouldn't anyone who finds you "harmful" or simply irritating get everyone like you kicked off the Internet or arrested? What principle do you have against it?
I tried to make it clear in my post that I'm referring to speech within the confines of a private organization/community. The people I describe above (neo-Nazis agitating for race war) are people I would want banned from the particular site, not banned from the Internet or arrested. Of course as a red-blooded American I'm proud of the first amendment and remain a huge believer in it. I just no longer really believe in the non-legalistic value of freedom of speech.
Btw, can you link the community you moderate, so we can see what your policies look like in practice?
It's a draconian, authoritarian hellhole. About what you'd expect.
monoamine
6d ago
I used to lean towards this position, but I've done a complete 180 in recent years. I went from a major advocate for the philosophical value of free speech to now thinking freedom of speech is worthless at best and net harmful at worst, when applied to social networks or any other privately owned place. It's a red herring.
It's nice that you can't go to jail for saying things in the US, but I don't see value in not being able to be kicked off of a social media platform for getting yourself and all of your friends to flood the medium with "gas the kikes race war now" until everyone who agrees plasters it with thousands of likes and it ends up in millions of people's feeds. If someone wants to make their own site to do that, they can go ahead, but it doesn't need to be in the public commons, let alone legally mandated that it MUST be in the public commons.
I attempted to create something like this many years ago and also seeded it with rat-adjacent types. It was good at first but I eventually realized you kind of have to choose: either you have heavy-handed left-leaning moderation or the site inevitably becomes very right-leaning at best or far-right at worst. You can't maintain an "accidentally moderate" average. Seeing what happened to Twitter after Elon bought it further reinforced this.
And, of course, there's The Motte. The Culture War Roundup threads in /r/SlateStarCodex from ~6 years ago were pretty much the best of both worlds. But it was obvious to most at the time that the distribution would inevitably drift rightward, until you have what you have now.
Lowest common denominator left-leaning redditors are eye-roll-inducing and tiresome, but if the choice is between that vs. conspiracist (and often bigoted) people from the right, I decided I should embrace the former and instead just try to filter for the intelligent liberals and leftists. I don't endorse Richard Hanania but I sympathize strongly with much of his recent writing on this topic.
(I will admit some of my thinking here stems from the fact that constant exposure to the right and far-right pushed me more to the left over the years, when previously I had considered myself more of a centrist.)
monoamine
6d ago
Lilith is an extremely common name for trans women, for whatever reason. (I'm very supportive of trans people and have several trans friends, and "Lilith" is a common joke/punchline in trans communities when discussing names due to how common yet silly it is.)
I think for most of them the name is a reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion.
monoamine
1mo ago
but after extensive experience with 4chan I suspect that the greentext, at bottom, is just the common 4chan theme of "I wish I could just use force to get women to have sex with me", but dressed up in an intellectual argument.
I think you're close but it's not quite that far. To be sure, a lot of 4channers definitely hold that sentiment, but most probably hold a sentiment more like "I wish women would have sex with me, they won't, and as a result I think they deserve to suffer as punishment". They don't typically have a desire to rape anyone, but they feel a general bitterness and vengefulness.
monoamine
1mo ago
I do think democracies are a proxy for civil unrest, even if that wasn’t the express purpose of democracy originally (cf etymology fallacy). Democracy is an outlet for political rage and catharsis. Radicals become political influencers and their danger to civil order is diminished as a result.
Exactly. This is why what Trump did with the 2020 election is so dangerous and corrosive. January 6 was a natural outpouring of what he set in motion, even if he didn't literally tell his supporters to breach the Capitol building. We should expect to see more serious civil unrest if he loses the 2024 election, since he will very likely claim it was rigged no matter what.
monoamine
1mo ago
Yeah, to be clear, that's definitely what I would do if I were to share it. I was just kind of being hyperbolic so that it wouldn't seem like I'd be tiptoeing around the fact that it's partly an attempt to grow the user count. I would not try to share it in an actual shill-y or marketing-y way at all.
monoamine
1mo ago
According to this, anything besides depicting relationships that aren't cisgender and heterosexual: https://x.com/KarlMaxxer/status/1823753493783699901
(This isn't necessarily due to those prompts being blocked for traditionalist cultural reasons, of course. But it's interesting.)
monoamine
1mo ago
So I just don't get the anti-retaliation side at all. I just don't. Do you apply this logic to other aspects of your lives?
I'm on the left and I find the "retaliation" angle here somewhat odd. If done solely or primarily out of retaliation or spite - like Cernovich with Sam Seder - where you do not think someone did something bad for real but you just want to give them a taste of their own medicine, then it feels like stupid, emotional, warmongering bullshit to me and I agree with all of the criticisms of the "right wing cancel squads" that I've seen in the past few days.
If you genuinely think it's really bad to support the attempted assassination of any major political figure, then while there can certainly be a retaliation motive, you're still broadly acting in good faith by trying to get people cancelled. If there's some sort of "I have a principle of supporting freedom of speech and opposing cancel culture but the desire for just deserts is temporarily overriding that at the moment" going on as well - sure, whatever. But if you actually are disgusted and outraged by people endorsing assassination attempts, I really see zero issue with any of these cancellations, because 1) that part of the motive seems "pure", and 2) I personally agree that it's bad to endorse assassinating politicians (including Trump, who I detest) so I feel fine with it.
I'm assuming most of these pro-cancellers on the right aren't just looking for some excuse to cancel annoying leftoids and gleefully jumping on the opportunity. As Scott points out, such behavior is bad and dumb for many reasons, including that one has no evidence any of these assassination-supporters endorse the sorts of cancellations the canceller despises, even if it could be likely. I figure most of the pro-cancellers in this situation just share the logic of most pro-cancellers on the left: they see something they find sickening and corrosive to society and antithetical to morality, and they're doing something about it.
(There's some wiggle room here: a liberal making a joke about the shooting does not necessarily genuinely think the shooting is good or desirable. For the sake of argument I'm speaking about the people who clearly sincerely are saying and believing "I wish the shooter hadn't missed".)
monoamine
2mo ago
I'm staunchly on the left, virulently anti-Trump, and am completely okay with people being cancelled for these comments. I would be a hypocrite if I weren't. I think there's a lot of crocodile tears from the left on this: if Obama were almost killed and people were saying the same things, how many would protest those people being fired?
monoamine
2mo ago
Sorry for the ad hominem, but I really can't understand the sorts of people who think this way. It's very strange to me. My assumption is that you probably believe there's a high likelihood for many other conspiracy theories. Can you please prove me right or wrong and tell me your opinions on the JFK assassination, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, Seth Rich, and the 2020 election?
Off-topic, but as someone who tries to never have a take on something without seeing the full context and who also hates viewing photos or videos that involve (real) violence, these are rough for me. (I'm indeed a lib, if it wasn't obvious.) I've never seen any of the George Floyd or Rittenhouse footage, for example.
monoamine
2mo ago
but I'd bet for real blue-teamers, in their mind she would have won anyway so why bother with the formalities? In fact why even think about that! We've got an election to win!
As a blue-teamer myself, that is definitely my view. And everyone else I know's view. Though there's also the notion that if you have a president and vice-president - or presidential and vice-presidential candidate - who are voted for, and the president/presidential candidate steps down, people expect the second-up to take their place.
monoamine
2mo ago
That's fair due to his statements about Israel. (That Wikipedia article shows even more divisive examples than just saying Israel should wipe out Hamas.) I think if he were just a random Jew who hadn't commented on Israel or was somewhat more critical, they mostly would be fine with voting for him.
Muslims can certainly be antisemitic, but - and I could be wrong - I think most Muslims in the US don't really have an issue with Jews who aren't known to be supportive of Israel. For some that may require active condemnation of Israel, but for others I think lack of explicit, vocal support is sufficient.
Because it's just random feel-good nonsense slogans. (Several prominent liberals on Twitter like Yglesias have also pointed out the inconsistency.) I'm referring to what's stated in that thread - people should scroll down and read it if they haven't. I'm not saying they're great slogans. I'm saying it isn't literally-Satanic-literal-communism.
monoamine
2mo ago
Why are people replying to this like "oh, that's interesting"? It's paranoid delusion.
monoamine
2mo ago
If the candidate doesn't signal support for Israel or preferably explicitly signals disapproval, I don't think many Michigan Muslims would care about the mere fact they're Jewish. At least not enough for it to make them not vote.
monoamine
2mo ago
To the extent that "normie" voters are even aware of the "online right" as an entity, it's from what they occasionally hear filtered through the opinions of "official" channels, where they are/will be portrayed as a bunch of neo-nazi white supremist weirdo ghouls regardless.
I remember scoffing at "Twitter is full of Nazis" for years, until it eventually became true.
monoamine
2mo ago
I rather envy the Democrats' ability to snap quickly into place around a candidate, utterly unbothered by whatever claims they made or positions they staked out a mere week ago.
One could perhaps say "unburdened by what has been".
monoamine
2mo ago
FBI decided to craft a kidnapping plot with which to libel right wingers
Full headline:
Lawyers: FBI lured men for Michigan Gov. Whitmer kidnap plot
That's what their defense attorneys say. Which is of course what they'd say. I'd recommend people read the full article to get a more comprehensive presentation.
I guess at this point I'm a proud intolerant leftist, then, pretty much. (Or at least a liberal, since "leftists" would call me not a leftist since I'm not a Marxist.) I started off as a very Gray Tribe-y center-lefty but eventually decided I had placed too much value in many of the purported virtues of that philosophy.
I somehow exist in a superposition of despising Karl Popper's bandied-about quote and having become extremely Popperpilled.
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